Guy Gavriel Kay – Sailing to Sarantium (1998) Review

8.5/10

Let us go back to the little visited Byzantine Empire, to the 6th century and age of Emperor Justinian I. This is the setting of Guy Gavriel Kay’s The Sarantine Mosaic, a duology of which Sailing to Sarantium (1998) is the first half of the story. The Western Roman empire has been trampled by the barbarians, including Rome, but the East still stands. A Christian Roman Empire, but nearly torn apart by diverging religious currents. Kay gives it all a different name and makes it historical fiction with a quarter turn towards the fantastic. An intimate epic with many point of view characters, a strong sense of place and history, and a poetic touch to its prose, Sailing to Sarantium is a beguiling work.

The novel follows the journey of Caius Crispus (call him Crispin) who is a talented mosaicist and is called by the Emperor to Sarantium to work on a mosaic for a new cathedral. With nothing to lose since he lost his wife and daughters to the plague, and with a kick in his arse and a secret message by his Ostrogoth queen, he arrives in a political hotbed. He is far from the only character to follow in this book, and that makes the layered title of this duology so apt: the Sarantine Mosaic, for these books are like a mosaic of stories.

Whereas K.J. Parker’s pseudo-fantasy Byzantium (perhaps the only other fantasy author to “capture” Byzantium successfully) is more irreverent in tone, Kay’s Sarantium story has a deeply spiritual component. The presence of religion is strong in these books. Not just concerning the plot elements in which a new church is being built as a plot device akin to Ken Follett’s Pillars of the Earth, but in the way the characters understand the world and in the way Kay composes his chapters. Take the prologue for example, beautifully composed, which runs neatly from sunrise to sunset, while the characters follow a religion with a Jesus figure who rides a sun chariot, and who make signs of the sun disk to ward themselves. To display the death and rise of an emperor with the rising and setting of the sun in a single chapter makes the events feel blessed by the sun God himself.

Kay’s worlds are so low-fantasy that when something magical occurs, it almost feels out of place. Almost as if the world and story have been precooked as historical fiction, and a chapter about a magical thing accentuates a heavy presence of the writer inserting something over my shoulder into the story. It felt that way to me when a Merlin figure appears and gifts Crispin a talking mechanical bird as a companion. The bird Linon is a nice addition, though. Temperamental Crispin and irascible Linon, who has its own role to fulfil.

This is not for readers who want spectacular magic and heart-pounding action in their stories. It is Crispin’s personal journey that the novel is engaged with. A man who lost everything, but might get his groove back through the journey. Spiritual in tone, and meeting characters who push and pull Crispin onwards and make him reconnect with himself. He travels through a half-pagan world, in which ancient traditions and the fading influence of Roman civilisation can be felt. Kay lets the two flow together sometimes, pagan and Christian, mutually reinforcing or begging the question. Crispin, as an artist, has an eye for beauty. For the colours of nature, and for the people around him. In extension, the words “Sailing to Sarantium” are explained in the novel as an expression, meaning to go on a journey that will change you, for better on worse:

“To say of a man that he was sailing to Sarantium was to say that his life was on the cusp of change: poised for emergent greatness, brilliance, fortune – or else at the very precipice of a final and absolute fall as he met something too vast for his capacity.”

After Crispin arrives in Sarantium, Kay treats us with more great storytelling. One chapter stitches the power of the Hippodrome, the power of the crowds and of the Emperor together into a single whole, and leading Crispin to a divine vision for his grand mosaic just before the horses start thundering down the sands. One of the best Emperor and Empress couples can be found here too. They seem really clever and fun and dangerous all at the same time. Kay plays with power, beauty and art, how they weave in and out of each other.

This novel is mostly a set-up for the second half of the duology, Lord of Emperors (2000), and does not offer an exciting climax itself. That awaits in the second novel. But if you can enjoy each chapter on its own merit as a beautifully constructed, emotionally charged piece of writing with strong characters and poetic turns of phrase, then you may find a very rich reading experience. As I worked my way through the novel, I began to realise that every single chapter was beautiful. A minor masterpiece, this may be, and united with the second half, maybe a full one.